Are Hearables the Smartest Wearables?
Fitbit- uncheck. Smart watch- uncheck. Head phones- uncheck. Language translators- uncheck.
Because the hearables are here, and this one device has capability of all these devices combined and more. So, if you are thinking that these are just an upgrade for earphones or headphones, think again. Hearables have nothing more in common with earphones than the fact that they both use our sense of hearing to communicate with us and both play music. Hearables are more like tiny computers in our ears, ready to assist us in improving the quality our lives. The launch of Apple’s own hearable, Airpods, with iPhone 7 has put this device in the limelight and the whole world is watching this category. So, as hearables are gaining ground as versatile and dependable devices, let us explore what they can and cannot do for us.
What gives hearable an edge over other wearables is that it utilises ears while all other devices have been focussed on wrist or utilising visual senses. Ears are more suited, especially for the activities related to monitoring health because ears offer more accuracy in calculating heart rate, body temperature and other vitals. So, hearables hold lot of promise in health and fitness tracking. Hearables like IconX from Samsung, Dash from Bragi and The Aware are already offering fitness tracking like heartrate and sleep monitoring, steps and calories tracking. Hearables have the ability to pick up brain waves and tell you about the REM stages of your sleep which gives us a better insight into our sleep pattern as compared to a Fitbit or a smart watch which only track our sleep movements.
This experience will improve as more data points get collected from hearables about human body and put to use to make these devices smarter. The big data collected from hearbales can be sent to the cloud and with machine learning algorithms applied, it can be used to give you a more personalised experience. They will know your body better than you and whisper in your ears what you need to do to live a healthier life. In fact, there has been some work in this direction already. Hearables are not just data storage and data display devices. They are already telling us how to sleep better or which cardio zone we should we should be working in. As hearables get smarter and more embedded in our lives, they would be interacting with our smart homes, telling us which movies to watch next or tell us to stop when we have had too much to drink, just like a wise friend.
As hearables are set to climb the ladder of technology to become smarter, they do their most basic job really well too. The audio quality is superior as compared to their predecessor earphones, like the Apple’s Airpod filters out the unwanted noise, Nuheara IQbuds lets you mix your own balance between your music and the real world, Hear One from Doppler offers noise filtering, cancelling and augmenting. The sound quality and call quality are substantially improved in the hearables.
Hearables do their job and do it rather well but without drawing too much attention. Unlike a bulky watch that sits on your hand or google glasses which look rather weird, these guys have the ability to disappear. You just have to tell them to do something, literally, and they do it. Voice commands to hearables are more natural than shouting them into your phone or dealing with a touch screen watch. Hearables give you access to your apps, read out messages and updates, deliver weather, all through voice controls. The idea that hearables eliminate the need to use eyes or hands to deal with the devices, is an exciting one. Some of the existing hearables, like the one from NY start-up Waverly Labs, even offers real time audio translation of various languages. Imagine the transformation it can bring about in the way we travel and conduct global business, by being equipped with something like this!
With a technology as exciting as this, what we could be looking at is a war of hearables in the market and the winner would of course be the consumer. From start-ups like Bragi to mammoths like Samsung and Apple, all are trying to beat the other in making this sensor laden device more appealing to the end-consumer. Reaching the right price to feature balance is what they will have to strive for. While early adopters may be different, masses will be looking for value these devices offer against the already existing wearables. At this point, the organizations are experimenting and the price ranges anywhere between $100 to $300.
There is still a long way to go for hearables to become our intelligent personal assistant and quite a few challenges too. The first and foremost being the battery life. If hearables have to become the indispensable part of our lives, they literally need to be with us 24/7. This calls for a battery life of, if not 24 hours, at least 18–20 hrs and that too in a size which fits inside an almost invisible hearable. This brings us to another challenge of how well a standard size hearable fits the ears of different people. While it is believed that 3-D scanning inside of the ear, can create a custom fit hearable that works for everyone, it remains to be seen how it will play out.
Hearable is a promising technology with capability of adding more value than any wearable has so far. It brings in an unexplored parameter into the picture- the human ear and with it comes infinite possibilities. While the companies race to become number one, we can sit back and watch the evolution of this tiny device into its smarter and better self.
